In their never ending efforts to discredit the Latter-day Restoration of the Gospel anti-Mormons search for any information they can find to make the prophets sound crazy, because if you can discredit them then you can discredit the work they did. Among the accusations that are hurled at early Church leaders is that Joseph Smith taught that the Moon is inhabited by people and that Brigham Young believed that beings lived on the Sun. In this article I will present the sources for these accusations in full (as opposed to the incomplete and partial quoting that anti-Mormons usually use) and place these quotations in their historical context, showing what people from the most respected scientific minds to the most common laborer believed about possible life on the Moon and Sun. Once I have done so I will demonstrate that nothing that Joseph Smith or Brigham Young said or believed was incongruent with the scientific knowledge of their day and that their statements do not disprove or discredit the Restoration of the Gospel or the veracity of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
People on the Moon
The source for the claim that the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that men lived on the Moon can be found in an edition of The Young Women’s Journal from 1892 titled, The Inhabitants of the Moon, by Oliver B. Huntington. It reads:
Astronomers and philosophers have, from time almost immemorial until very recently, asserted that the moon was uninhabited, that it had no atmosphere, etc. But recent discoveries, through the means of powerful telescopes, have given scientists a doubt or two upon the old theory.
Nearly all the great discoveries of men in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a Prophet.
As far back as 1837, I know that he said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to a greater age than we do – that they live generally to near the age of 1000 years.
He described the men as averaging near six feet in height, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style.
There are a lot of reasons to take this account with a grain of salt. First of all, notice that this article was published in 1892 about something that happened in 1837. There is fifty-five years of separation there. Huntington was born in 1823. If he had heard this account from the Prophet’s lips as most people reading this account have assumed he would have only been fourteen at most. That is an incredibly young age and a very long time to remember something with perfect clarity and correctitude. That alone would justify calling the account into question. After all, it seems just as likely as a young Huntington may have as easily heard Joseph Smith telling a joke – “Sure, Brigham. And there are 6’0 ft. tall Quakers living on the Moon!” – as he heard Joseph Smith say it in all seriousness and then remembered that perfectly five and a half decades later. But there is an even larger wrinkle here – Huntington isn’t at all reporting something he himself witnessed.
In a 1982 article titled Mormons and Moonmen, Latter-day Saint author Van Hale conclusively demonstrated that Huntington was actually just repeating an 1881 account that he had purchased from Philo Dibble, which reads:
Inhabitants of the Moon
The inhabitants of the moon are more of a uniform size than the inhabitants of the earth, being about 6 feet in height.
They dress very much like the quaker style and are quite general in style, or the one fashion of dress.
They live to be very old; coming generally, near a thousand years. This is the description of them as given by Joseph the Seer, and he could “See” whatever he asked the Father in the name of Jesus to see.
I heard him say that “he could ask what he would ask of the Father in the name of Jesus and it would be granted” and I have no more doubt of it than I have that the mob killed him.
Mormons and Moonmen, pg. 15 of pdf
You can that the accounts are almost exactly the same. So then the question becomes, where did Dibble get his information? He doesn’t claim to have heard it in person and he provides no other source he heard it from (for example, he doesn’t say, “William Smith told me his brother Joseph taught this…”). At best this is a third hand account (Dibble to Huntington to us) but it is just as likely a fifth, sixth, or even eighth hand account. We have no idea how long the game of telephone was played with this account or who it originates with. There is no trustworthy evidence that Joseph Smith taught that men lived on the Moon.
The thing is, even if Joseph Smith had believed people lived on the Moon he wouldn’t have been out of the norm. In 1835 the New York newspaper The Sun had massive success after publishing a series of satirical articles about human sized bat people living on the Moon that the general public thought was completely authentic. The 1846 astronomy textbook The Young Astronomer also proposed that the Moon might be inhabited:
It is the general opinion of Astronomers that the Moon is inhabited. Though we cannot hope by any increase of telescopic power, within the limits of probability, to see inhabitants on the Moon, it is not unreasonable to suppose that their works may be seen.
The Young Astronomer pgs. 44-45
… Professor Gruithausen, of Munich, declares that he has discovered, by his large telescope, cities, fortifications, roads and other artificial works, erected by the inhabitants of the Moon. He has even proposed the plan of opening a telegraphic correspondence with the inhabitants of that world. He suggests the erection, upon the plains of Siberia, of a vast geometrical figure. He thinks that the inhabitants of the Moon, seeing this figure through their telescopes, might regard it as a signal, and thus be induced to erect a similar one in reply.
The “Professor Gruithausen” in the quotation is most likely astronomer Franz von Paula Gruithuisen, one of the most important astronomers of his era. His 1824 paper arguing for and providing evidence of life on the Moon was so well received that he was appointed Professor of Astronomy at the University of Munich because of them. Clearly, if Joseph Smith (or Brigham Young) thought that there might me people on the Moon then they were hardly outside of the norm and were definitely not holding views that would have been considered wildly fantastical or unscientific. In fact it is just the opposite.
People on the Sun
The source for the story that Brigham Young believed that people lived on the Sun comes from a July 1870 address given by President Young titled, The Gospel: The One-Man Power, which reads in part:
It has been observed here this morning that we are called fanatics. Bless me! That is nothing. Who has not been called a fanatic who has discovered anything new in philosophy or science? We have all read of Galileo the astronomer who, contrary to the system of astronomy that had been received for ages before his day, taught that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of our planetary system? For this the learned astronomer was called “fanatic,” and subjected to persecution and imprisonment of the most rigorous character. So it has been with others who have discovered and explained new truths in science and philosophy which have been in opposition to long-established theories; and the opposition they have encountered has endured until the truth of their discoveries has been demonstrated by time.
The term “fanatic” is not applied to professors of religion only. How was it with Dr. Morse, when shut up in the attic of an old building in Baltimore for more than a year, with a little wire stretched round the room, experimenting upon it with his battery, he told a friend that by means of that he could sit there and talk to Congress in Washington? Was he not considered a fanatic, and wild, and crazy? Certainly he was; and so it was with Robert Fulton, when he was conducting his experiments with steam and endeavoring to apply it so as to propel a vessel through the water. And all great discoverers in art, science, or mechanism have been denounced as fanatics and crazy; and it has been declared by their contemporaries that they did not know what they were saying, and they were thought to be almost, as wild and incoherent as the generality of the people now think George Francis Train to be.
I will tell you who the real fanatics are: they are they who adopt false principles and ideas as facts, and try to establish a superstructure upon, a false foundation. They are the fanatics; and however ardent and zealous they may be, they may reason or argue on false premises till doomsday, and the result will be false. If our religion is of this character we want to know it; we would like to find a philosopher who can prove it to us. We are called ignorant; so we are: but what of it? Are not all ignorant? I rather think so. Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? When we view its face we may see what is termed “the man in the moon,” and what some philosophers declare are the shadows of mountains. But these sayings are very vague, and amount to nothing; and when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain.
The Gospel: The One-Man Power, pgs. 270 – 271, edited for clarity by adding paragraphization and bolding
I have provided a fuller quotation here to show that in context what the prophet is preaching about is not that it is gospel doctrine that men live on the Moon or the Sun. Rather he is talking about intellectual and spiritual tolerance as well as the willingness of the masses to hate, persecute, and deride anyone who is different from them, even when that person is demonstrably, scientifically, correct. He is not teaching as a religious truth that the Sun or Moon are inhabited places. That said, the bolded section does seem to clearly indicate that Brigham Young believed there at least good be people living on the moon and on the Sun. Assuming that the scribe and publisher of this address, George D. Watt, didn’t alter it without permission as he did many other times, what should we make of this? I believe we have already dealt effectively and conclusively with the issue of people living on the Moon. But, is Brigham Young stupid for believing people could have lived on the Sun?
Only if one of the greatest and most celebrated scientific minds and astronomers in history is also a moron for thinking the same.
Sir William Frederick Herschel, born Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel in modern day Germany but died in England (where he was also knighted for his scientific discoveries), is one of the most important astronomers in history. Not only did he first develop the theory that stars form out of the compression of material in a nebula, discover infrared rays, and explain how the Universe formed and expanded, but he also discovered the planet Uranus (among many other achievements to long to list here.) The man was a certifiable scientific mastermind and one of the most important astronomers ever.
He also believed people lived on the Sun.
In his 1795 paper, On the Nature and Construction of the Sun and fixed Stars, he wrote:
From the luminous atmosphere of the sun I proceed to its opaque body, which by calculation from the power it exerts upon the planets we know to be of great solidity; and from the phenomena of the dark spots, many of which, probably on account of their high situations, have been repeatedly seen, and otherwise denote inequalities in* their level, we surmise that its surface is diversified with mountains and vallies.
What has been said enables us to come to some very important conclusions, by remarking, that this way of considering the sun and its atmosphere, removes the great dissimilarity we have hitherto been used to find between its condition and that of the rest of the great bodies of the solar system.
The sun, viewed in this light, appears to be nothing else than a very eminent, large, and lucid planet, evidently the first, or in strictness of speaking, the only primary one of our system; all others being truly secondary to it. Its similarity to the other globes of the solar system with regard to its solidity, its atmosphere, and its diversified surface; the rotation upon its axis, and the fall of heavy bodies, leads us on to suppose that it is most probably also inhabited, like the rest of the planets, by beings whose organs are adapted to the peculiar circumstances of that vast globe.
Whatever fanciful poets might say, in making the Sun the abode of blessed spirits, or angry moralists devise, in pointing it out as a fit place for the punishment of the wicked, it does not appear that they had any other foundation for their assertions than mere opinion and vague surmise; but now I think myself authorized, upon astronomical principles to propose the sun as an inhabitable world, and am persuaded that the foregoing observations, with the conclusions I have drawn from them, are fully sufficient to answer every objection that may be made against it.
On the Nature and Construction of the Sun and fixed Stars, pgs. 62-63. Emphasis in the original.
He goes on to support the argument that the Moon is most likely inhabited as well and counters arguments saying that the Moon is too harsh to support life by saying:
My answer to this will be, that that very difference which is now objected, will rather strengthen the force of my argument than lessen its value: we find, even upon our globe, that there is the most striking difference in the situation of the creatures that live upon it. While man walks upon the ground, the birds fly in the air, and fishes swim in water; we can certainly not object to the conveniences afforded by the moon, if those that are to inhabit its regions are fitted to their conditions as well as we on this globe are to ours. An absolute, or total sameness, seems rather to denote imperfections, such as nature never exposes to our view; and, on this account, I believe the analogies that have been mentioned fully sufficient to establish the high probability of the moon’s being inhabited like the earth.
On the Nature and Construction of the Sun and fixed Stars, pg. 66
He goes on to mention how inhabitable both the Sun and the Moon are multiple times and even theorizes about what it must be like for an inhabitant of the Moon (or of the inhabitants of the Moons of other planets) to look down upon the planet around which they revolve. Now, not everyone agreed with Herschel on this, obviously. But it is clear that thinking there was life on the Moon and even the Sun were ideas seen as scientifically valid and were promulgated by some of the most important and influential scientific minds of the era.
Final Thoughts
The paper really is a fascinating read all on its own, but in context it proves something very clearly. Brigham Young was not crazy or stupid for believing living beings could or did inhabit the Moon and the Sun. It was a common scientific opinion of the day, held and promoted by some of the greatest and most influential minds in astronomy and science, that both the Sun and Moon could be or in fact were inhabited. Indeed, just the opposite is true. Instead of them believing that people lived on the Moon because they believe in some crazy religion, as our critics would argue, it is more likely that they believed men lived on the Moon because they were paying close attention to the well-known scientific pronouncements of the times in which they lived.
Anti-Mormons want to make it sound like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were crazy or stupid, that they believed fantastical stories and that their religion was just one more crazy fantasy story that they told, along with believing silly stuff like the Moon and Sun had people living on it. Anti-Mormons want to make these beliefs into proof that Joseph and Brigham were false prophets. This characterization works so well today because so many people are ignorant of history and historical context. In their historical context it becomes clear that when Joseph Smith and Brigham Young said that they believed that people might or did live on the Moon and/or the Sun (if Joseph even believed such a thing at all), they were not making pronouncements based on their “crazy” religious beliefs, they were paying close attention to the well-known scientific pronouncements of the times in which they lived and sharing them. In other words, they were “following the science” which agued with the same authority that the Sun and Moon were inhabited as science today puts forth the theory of evolution. The problem here, if indeed there is one at all, is not Mormonism but how scientific knowledge has totally transformed our understanding of the Universe since the days of Sir William Herschel, Franz von Paula Gruithuisen, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young.